"I am proud to shut down the government for border security, Chuck, because the people of this country don’t want criminals and people that have lots of problems and drugs pouring into our country. So I will take the mantle. I will be the one to shut it down. I’m not going to blame you for it." -- Trump, 12/11/18

Words of Advice:

"Never Feel Sorry For Anyone Who Owns an Airplane."-- Tina Marie

"If Something Seems To Be Too Good To Be True, It's Best To Shoot It, Just In Case." -- Fiona Glenanne

"Flying the Airplane is More Important than Radioing Your Plight to a Person on the GroundWho is Incapable of Understanding or Doing Anything About It." -- Unknown

"There seems to be almost no problem that Congress cannot, by diligent efforts and careful legislative drafting, make ten times worse." -- Me

Greene and his ilk love to sit in their mansions, drink champagne on their yachts and buzz around in their jets, all the while decrying those who advocate for paying workers living wages, not merely wages that put them on food stamps and hoping that the local church-run food pantry's shelves aren't bare this week. They engineer the tax codes to make taxes regressive and to exempt themselves from taxation.**

I guess that the little brouhaha between us and the Germans and Japanese in the early `40s wasn't all that serious, so we can forget all of that "greatest generation" malarkey. Not to mention that little family spat between 1861 and 1865. Or the two wars of independence against the most powerful power on the planet (the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812). Or all of those years where the USA and the USSR had thousands of nuclear-tipped missiles aimed at each other.

I can understand a vigorous opposition to the Obama Administration. That's fine. And I get the need to whip up one's supporters in order to beg for more donations to the political action funds. But I sure wish that the NRA could do it without coming across as a pack of sheet-wearing mouthbreathers.

And we all know about how the NSA, DEA, telcos, ISPs and the Post Office have been monitoring our communications for well over a decade. And how the NSA has been building a huge server farm in Utah to keep all of that shit.

Measles is highly contagious. So kid A, who has measles, walks through a room. Two hours later, another kid walks through the room and the second kid is likely to catch the disease.

If you don't vaccinate your kids and some other kid, like that child who is recovering from leukemia, gets sick, then the parent of that kid gets to whale on your kneecaps with a 3' length of rebar. Because shit like this shouldn't be happening in a First World country.

One of the more interesting things to do on a gloomy January day is to read the reports by the gunnie reporters at the annual SHOT Show. You might recall that last year, they were almost all falling over themselves to praise the Remington R51, a gun that proved to be such a turkey that Remington recalled all of them. Well, this year, the reporters are once again falling to their knees and opening wide over new guns that haven't been in the hands of the (beta-testing) public.

Korth makes revolvers for people who think that a Colt Python is a budget-priced gun. (They're really pricey). A grand for this one is dirt-cheap by their standards.

Beyond that, a revolver that doesn't need moonclips for rimless rounds isn't exactly new. Maybe Korth's system is better. But I can't see why someone would want to use speedloaders over moonclips. And a Picatinny rail on a snubbie, well, that just looks wrong.

#3: At least, in the midst of praising All Things Bull(shit), this guy gets around to acknowledging that Taurus "had" a quality-control problem. I don't know about "had", I've heard too many stories about their crappy QC and, even in recent years, people talking about buying Taurii and then having to repeatedly send them back for repairs. The biggest gripe, besides general crappiness, is that you have to pay the shipping each way when you send in your heater to Taurus for them to attempt to fix their cruddy products.

#5: HK's "popular" USP 9mm pistol. I don't know how "popular" it is, I never see one for sale in any of the gun shops. Maybe it's because the MSRP on those things is a grand or better? Yep, when you can get two Glocks or two S&W 9mms for the same price*, dropping a grand or better on a HK is going to appeal to whom, exactly? Certainly not to any cop shop that's crunching budget numbers. HK. Because, well, you know.
__________________________________________* Or half-a-dozen High Points, if you're equipping a street gang.

There are a lot of these on the used market today and the pricing is good for a lot of them. I don't care for striker-fired guns at all. I'm reasonably comfortable with DA/SA autoloaders; one of my EDC guns is a PPK.

From what I've read, the general consensus is that S&W got it right with their third-generation automatics. The LEO market, though, wants striker-fired guns (a subset wants 1911s), so that's what they make. And if you want a used .40 S&W M&P or Glock, lots of them are out there, as well, as there seems to be a flow back by cop shops to the 9mm ever since the Feebies began to move that way.

Anyway, the gun was used and came with only one magazine. More are on order; I should be able to do a good range run with it later this week.

The Battle of the Bulge ended seventy years ago today, as the Germans withdrew from the last bit of territory that they had taken several weeks before. The Germans were so short of fuel that their Panzer soldiers had to abandon large numbers of their tanks and walk back out of the Ardennes.

Right. The pol who couldn't handle the pressure of being the governor of the least-densely populated state in the country (and third least populous) and who had to quit half-way through her first term thinks that she can handle a job which rapidly ages people?

First, high class: Ernie Banks has died. If you lived in the Chicago area, even if you weren't a sports fan, you knew about Ernie Banks. He was a great ballplayer who played for one of the worst teams in the history of baseball. Banks was probably the best player never to play in a World Series. He loved the game.

The Patriots seem to have an allergy to playing clean. Cheating is apparently an institutional practice with them. Whatever edge they can take, fair or foul, clean or dirty, you can count on New England to grab it. The term "sportsmanship" means nothing to them.

Sports aren't war. A game isn't a small-unit battle. It's still a game and how you play it still matters. You can ask Mark McGuire or Barry Bonds about that, who will likely not be elected into the Baseball Hall of Fame until sometime after the heat death of the Universe.

Which is why there will be lots of column inches of praise and hours of remembrances on the sports channels for Mr. Cub. But when the Steroid-Sluggers or Coach Belicheat pass away, you'll see little of that.

Thursday, January 22, 2015

Blackberries have gone from being the hot mobile phone to being about the last choice for almost anyone. If app developers aren't making their apps for Blackberries, it likely is because they don't see anything to gain by doing so. Go into a meeting and you'll see people with iPhones and Android devices, but you're going to find jack-all users with Blackberries, unless their employer gives them to the users.

But like a lot of companies who have failed or are in the process of failing in the market, RIM wants the government to tilt the playing field in their favor. They're half-socialists, in that they want the government to protect them from failure (and subsidize them if they do), but to let them keep everything if they then begin to succeed.

If you go bust, it's on you. But the CEOs all expect to be bailed out in one way or another. Which is just what RIM is asking for, now.

Some decades ago, or so the story goes, the Feebies set up a sting operation to bribe a bunch of politicians in New York. They only found one guy who wouldn't take the cash offered. Afterwards, it turned out that the reason the guy spurned the cash was because they didn't offer enough- he was insulted.

Worse is that there are people who, for medically legitimate reasons, can't be vaccinated. They depend on everyone else being vaccinated, so that there is little risk of them catching the disease in question. It's a concept called "herd immunity". But if enough morons don't get vaccinated, then there is a transmission pathway to them through the imbeciles.

As for this, I'm pretty much convinced that humanity has fucked things over past fixing. If you ever saw the beginning to the movie Serenity, it mentioned that humanity fled Earth, pretty much after fucking things up beyond all repair. The reality is that we'll probably fuck up the planetary ecosystem past the point of no return long before we develop the technology to flee the planet.

Which, in a way, may explain why we've not found any hints of intelligent life. For any species that develops to that point probably fouls its own nest and dies off. Just like bacteria in a Petri dish does and just like we're doing.

The two conversations in the first episode of season 6 (#66 overall); one between Chief Deputy Art Mullen (home recuperating from a serious case of bullet wounds) and Raylan Givens, and one between Boyd Crowder and Dewey Crowe, are not to be missed.

I won't say more, in case the show is in your DVR or you're going to catch it "on demand" on cable.

The one thing that bugs me about the show is that everybody, including stone-cold thugs like Boyd Crowder and incompetent thugs, like Dewey Crowe, all have such perfect, bright, white teeth. They have all of their teeth and not a one has stains from nicotine or coffee.

Wednesday, January 21, 2015

AOPA says the rules are arbitrary. So what, aren't they all? What's so sacrosanct about the single-engine stall speed of 61kts? Or the 800HP rule for type-ratings? If the Terrafugia is a LSA, why not the Cessna 150 or 152, which are both lighter and have a lower stall speed?

LSAs were supposed to be simple and relatively cheap. The Terrafugia is neither. Anyone who can afford to buy a $300,000+ airplane isn't going to be terribly deterred by the requirement to get a private ticket.

This is by no means over, but eight years of back pay is not an insignificant issue. And it's quite possible that the TSA is going to have to pay a boatload of attorneys' fees to Mr. MacLean's lawyers.

I hope that comes out of the HQ budget for the TSA. Little chance of that, though.

So they may go march to defend a satirical rag that makes fun of people that the Pommies don't like, but when it comes to scrutinizing what government, does, oh, the horror!
____________________________________* At least a press that, unlike, say, the New York Times, actually does investigative reporting.

Fun facts: The dry weight of the first state was 288,000 pounds. The fueled weight of the first stage was over five million pounds. The center engine of the first stage was shut down early in order to limit the acceleration of the rocket.

Monday, January 19, 2015

it wasn't the first time that somebody had dropped bombs from an aircraft, but it was the first time that more than one aircraft was used and the first time that "strategic bombing" was carried out. The idea was then, and remained for decades, that civilian morale could be sapped and the war ended by attacking civilian targets in the far rear areas.

As a way of forcing an enemy to divert military assets from frontline use to air defense, maybe it works. But as a way of draining enemy morale and compelling them to end a war, it's been a failure, time and time again.

Sunday, January 18, 2015

Murphy was right about their staffing. They have 11 people whose pay they had to report, because they're pulling down six-figure paychecks, according to the most-recent Form 990 (Sept, `13). Steve Nardizzi, the Executive Director and founder, gets paid $375K. Of the paid employees, there is apparently only one woman, Christine Hill, who is the "EVP Congressional Affairs", who was paid $133.9K and who was the one who was paid the least of all.

They got paid $5.8 million in royalties, $225 million in fundraising and contributions, $2.5 million in investment income. The top brass were paid $2.83 million, they paid out $26 million in payroll costs (including wages, taxes, pension benefits). $16 million in office expenses, $6.3 million in travel costs, $33 million to "consulting & outside services".

Murphy is right about another point: They seem to exist mainly to give money to other groups. A quarter-mil to CT Public Broadcasting (and to no other PBS station)? $600K to the Lizzie Doyle Foundation? They had nearly $17 million in cash and $166 million in "net assets" at the end of the tax year. Seems like a hell of a lot of cash to be squirreled away. In comparison, local charitable organizations seem to run on the financial knife-edge. I'll bet if you were to look at the financials of your local animal shelter, or battered spouse shelter or food pantry, you'll find that they are not exactly flush with cash.

Maybe you can call up the forms for any other large charity and similarly pick them apart.

But it would seem to me that giving money to what essentially is a "charitable middleman" is a waste of at least part of your donation.

Saturday, January 17, 2015

I'm watching the evening news in real time tonight. One of the commercials was for the Wounded Warrior Project, a spot that seemed to be at least 60 seconds long. They wanted $19/month.

I looked them up on Charity Navigator. They don't seem to be too bad, other than the point that the founder is sucking down $375,000/year. Scroll to the bottom of the page and you'll find out that while they're not the worst charity for servicemen (that's the USO), they're not exactly stellar, and certainly better than the Komen folk.

No, the point that bugs me is that taking care of wounded warriors is a collective responsibility, a moral responsibility, that should not be left to the private sector running begathons. It belongs to all of us and the Federal government should be funding everything needed to take care of the veterans. Arguably, relying on the VA to deliver all of the care is a bad idea. And maybe we don't need the humanitarian version of LockMart to suck up huge profits while delivering shitty services.

But tin-cupping it is just wrong. If the Federal government can't afford to take care of the vets who need help, then we've got no business sending any more of them into harm's way.

That didn't sell too well on the national stage, so the man who ran in `08 as a slightly moderate conservative and in `12 as a severe conservative is now trying to find some other robe that will look good on him.

At this point, it's clear that Rmoney's core political belief is "I should be president." Which, at least, is honest. He'll say anything, do anything and become anything in order to become the president. But what he'd do as president, well, good luck guessing that. For when you try to find his bedrock political philosophy, there's no there, there.

The cops were claiming that they used the photo arrays for "facial recognition drills", which is hogwash, because they shot everyone. And this is how they tried to claim "nope, we weren't racist" position:

Friday, January 16, 2015

That's how long it's been since the weather and availability have permitted me to go flying. This afternoon was just gorgeous: Low winds, clear skies, temps in the mid fifties. I got in an hour before dark and shot three landings. Maybe I need to fly less, for those landings were all smooth. I did two 3-point and one wheel landing. All no drama.

Some guy had a stuck mic on Unicom. At least he wasn't singing to himself.

Beautiful day to fly. A fair number of pilots were bagging off work and going flying. As did I.

Airport rules require airplanes in the shade hangars to be tied down. The pilot of this Cessna 206 might as well have used baling twine.

Imagine that you have a nice house in the country on a quiet road. You never know what might happen across the street. I'll bet that these two homeowners sometimes feel like opening up a vein.

I suspect that you won't have to do much digging to find posts by the Keyboard Commandos which had disputed that those soldiers were truly injured. If you were to go back a century, you'd find the Fountain-Pen Brigade arguing that shell shock was a form of cowardice.

Now we know that those chairborne warriors were full of shit then and now. And we have a moral duty to care for the TBI sufferers. Regardless of the squawking of loons like former Senator Tom Coburn.

Thursday, January 15, 2015

What the Navy once called frigates and, before that, Destroyer Escorts were ships that were designed to escort convoys, replenishment ships and landing ships. They were primarily ASW ships, built for blue-water warfare.

LCSs are glorified offshore PT boats. They don't have the crew or the capability for extended open-ocean operations (like DE/FFs did). The very word "littoral" implies that they are designed to operate where brown water meats blue water-- not very far offshore. And certainly not in the middle of the ocean. So far, it hasn't been proven that the LCSs can operate very far from a support base (or ocean-going tugs).

Some clothing designer and a QVC hostess couldn't figure out whether the Moon is a planet or a star. The concept that the Moon is a moon, a satellite, never occurred to them. Even when somebody off camera informed them of that, they didn't believe it.

Wednesday, January 14, 2015

I watched Shaft the other day. The movie, in case you're not familiar with it*, was made in 1971.

John Shaft carried a Colt Detective Special, either blued or nickel-plated (he had one of each, he kept the spare in his freezer). In that world, if somebody wasn't next to a telephone, you couldn't reach him. A lot of buildings still had elevator operators and elevator starters (yes, that was a job). Some apartment buildings had switchboards and staffed kitchens that supplied meals to the residents. Apartments had servants' entrances. People were smoking on the street, in stores, restaurants, bars and offices.

I have heard cops say "I'd rather be judged by twelve than carried by six." The bitter truth is that cops being judged by twelve is exceedingly rare. Most shootings are found to be justified. It pretty much takes putting a guy on his knees or on the ground an then shooting him in the back for charges to be brought. Even forming an impromptu firing squad has been found to be a righteous killing.

Normally, they just get a pat on the back, no matter how bad the shooting is. In small departments, they may be later encouraged to find work with another department. In large departments, there is the "rubber gun squad" or working the motor pool.

..... Comcast. Which is no surprise to anyone who has them as a cable/ISP provider. Comcast has gotten so large and so evil that over-the-air TV is enjoying a resurgence. Netflix, Hulu and Amazon Fire TV are growing because Comcast and the other cable providers suck so badly.

A friend's Comcast box stopped working. They gave her another one, which didn't run right. See, for Comcast, their "cable boxes" are also cheap-ass DVRs, which Comcast keeps "refurbishing". ("Refurbishing", to Comcast, is putting fresh batteries into the remote. Sometimes, they don't even bother to wipe the drives, so you can get a random selection of somebody else's recordings.) The Comcast cable boxes are old pieces of crap from Cisco or Scientific Atlanta that have been out of production for several years.

You'd think that just swapping out a box would be no big deal, right? Not to Comcrap, which crammed $50 onto her bill. It wasn't for service, because Comcast customers now have to do their own equipment installations.

Comcast is so large, now, that they really don't give a shit about residential customers.

Thursday, January 8, 2015

Two of the many cartoons in reaction to the massacre yesterday in Paris:

I was going to point out in this post that Christian fundamentalists, at least in the First World, have pretty much confined reacting to blasphemy by running their mouths or suing people. But a spot of research on that brought up the firebombing of the Saint Michel theater in Paris in 1988, in which some Christian fundies threw Molotov cocktails into a theater while "The Last Temptation of Christ" was being shown.

Yet, before anyone starts tarring a religion of a billion or more people for this, ask yourselves if all Christians are to blame for the bombings of abortion clinics and the murders of doctors who have performed them. Ask yourselves if all Christians are to blame for the Srebrenica massacre or the Rwandan genocide.

Murder and terror in the name of a religion is hardly unique to Islam.

For the last few months, a lot of cops and their political apologists have been saying things such as "if you respect our authoritah, none of this bad shit would have happened."

But when it comes time for them to respect the authority of the elected official who is their boss, nope, not gonna happen.

I believe that people largely get that police officers have jobs that can be stressful at times, boring at other times, and downright dangerous at times. I think that people understand that most cops do good work each day.

But the fact cannot be denied that there are bad cops. (Rampart Division, anyone?) There are bad procedures (NYPD's "stop and frisk", for one). There are questionableshootings. There are rotten departments (NOPD, for one). The paramilitarization of law enforcement is a problem that has impacted those who are poor and are minorities for a long time, and is now becoming apparent to all but the most entitled citizens. The reality that prosecutors routinely rubber-stamp all but the most egregious (or videoed) abuses by police officers is hardly debatable. There are towns, cities and counties that use their police and the local court systems for revenue generation.

Reform will happen. There is a consensus building. The police can either be part of the process or, at the end of the day, reform will be jammed down their throats by the courts and by the politicians who ran and won on a platform of reforming the goons with guns.

Monday, January 5, 2015

There has been a running joke for decades in the aviation industry, back to the days when the Flight Engineer's job was eliminated: Airliners will eventually have a single pilot and a dog on the flight deck. The pilot's job will be to take over if things go wrong. The dog's job will be to bite the pilot if he touches anything.

That, I submit, is what it was all about and what it is still all about. Mike Huckabee got Wayne Dumond released from prison,* a serial rapist, who went on to commit murder. But that hasn't torpedoed Huckabee's presidential ambitions. Not like the release of Willie Horton sank Michael Dukakis's campaign, at any rate.

You can probably guess the respective racial identities of the two criminals.

Scalise's error wasn't that he spoke to a bunch of white supremacists, for he was merely following the GOP's playbook. His error was being caught doing it. Which is why Boehner and the other GOP congressman will do nothing more than tut-tut in public, for Scalise knows that they are just spreading the ol' whitewash over him.
_____________________________________* A particularly nasty twist to the efforts of some people in Arkansas to release Dumond was because one of his earlier victims was a third cousin to Bill Clinton. To some folks on the far, far right, any crime committed against anyone related to Clinton was (and still is) worthy of praise.

Rule No. 5: Terms of Service: Political appointees of the Obama and Bush Administrations may not read this blog unless they (i) post a comment confessing same and (ii) acknowledge that both men are war criminals. This blog may not be read by members of the Arizona Legislature.

Violation of this term is a violation of 18 U.S.C. 1030(a)(2)(C) and you're off to share a cell with Chris Christie, asswipe.

Rule No. 6: If I wanted you to write a "guest post", I'd ask you. Don't bother asking me to put one up from you. I won't. Start yer own goddamn blog.You Have Been Warned.